UFO ROUNDUP

Volume 6
Number 2
January 11, 2001

Editor: Joseph Trainor

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FAMILY ENCOUNTERS A UFO IN CENTRAL ARGENTINA

On Tuesday, January 2, 2001, at 3:30 a.m., Julio
Salguero and his family were driving home to
Corralito (population 2,200), small town
south of Cordoba in central Argentina. They had
spent the New Year's holiday with relatives in Villa Maria
and were now on their way home.

Hoping to cut down the travel time, Salguero turned
to getting home and sleeping in their own beds.

With Salguero in the car were his wife, his 14-year-old
daughter, his 12-year-old son Julio Jr., his two younger
children, ages 2 and 1, and his 14-year-old niece.

Hoping to cut down on the travel time, Salguero left
the highway west of Villa Maria and took a little-used
dirt road across the pampas. An electric power
line ran alongside this road.

"When he passed through Rio Tercero, he chose to
traverse the 18 kilometers (11 miles) of land devastated
by recent floods."

"At the time in question, some 5 kilometers (3 miles)
from Corralito, began the experience which he related on
the radio talk shows" the following day.

"'We were calmly driving along when suddenly my wife
screamed, 'Be careful!' and we saw a light heading straight for us,'"
Salguero told the Argentinian newspaper La Voz del Interior.
"'I hit the brakes. What I could see was a round, very powerful
light, like a welding light, over a meter (4 feet) in diameter.
It seemed to be heading straight for the car, but it suddenly
stopped and backed off. It remained at the height of the
power cables (18 meters or 60 feet) that are now on the side
of the road, moving up and down,' he explained."

"Salguero stated that he had not planned to make all
of this public, but it became known when a friend from the
FM radio station El Sol in Tio Tercero,
with whom he had discussed the event."

"'The light lit up everything for a few minutes, without
an exaggeration, as if it were broad daylight, due to its
intensity. It also rose some 30 meter (100 feet) into
the air and suddenly vanished. Neither I nor my family
can state which way it went because we'd be lying. What
we saw is that it vanished suddenly, like a light being
switched off,' he declared, fully aware that his story may
be less-than-believable to some."

"'There is a boy named Alejandro Yori, who says he saw a
powerful light moving around the pampas all the way
from Corralito,' remarked Salguero," adding that his wife and
children would corroborate his story.

"Salguero owns a cable-TV system in Corralito and
also does electronics work. He is considered a credible
individual by his neighbors, and no one in the community
believes that he or his family would concoct such a story."

"After calculating that the episode lasted 'two to three
minutes,' Salguero said he kept his foot on the brake with
the (car's) engine running, and that he signalled with his
headlights 'out of despair and for lack of anything better to do,
since we were really scared. We couldn't sleep last night,' he
remarked."

At 3:30 a.m., while the Salgueros were having their UFO
encounter out on the pampas, there were simultaneous and
unexplained power failures in Corralito and in nearby
Rio Tercero. Both communities are located about
110 kilometers (66 miles) south of Cordoba and about
320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Buenos Aires, the
national capital.

"'As far as we know, no reason for the power
outages has been found,' he said."

"Salguero described himself as 'a believer in God' and
remarked that he neither reads nor is interested in UFO-
related subjects and that he would rather not have
had the experience. "I don't drink. Besides, there's not
just my word, there's my wife and children and niece.'"

"Twelve-year-old Julio Jr. told the newspaper, that
he saw 'a light hovering over the high voltage
line on the roadside that evening.' He added that 'it was
white and didn't seem to be so large, but it cast a lot of light.
It then became larger and changed colors , becoming more
blue, sky blue, and then violet until it disappeared all of a
sudden.'"

"He added that he saw the light 30 meters (100 feet)
from the car. I was very scared,' he admitted."

"According to the Falda de Carmen (scientific)
research station, there was a similar incident in Corralito
ten years ago," back in 1990. (See the newspaper
La Voz del Interior for January 5, 2001.
(Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales, autor de los libros
Chupacabras and Other Mysteries y Forbidden Mexico,
y tambien Gloria Coluchi, para eso articulo de diario.)

HOVERING UFO SIGHTED IN NEW SOUTH WALES

On Monday, January 1, 2001, at 3:20 a.m., Kylie
Petsky was driving on the Pacific Highway north
of Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia
when she spotted an intense bright white light on the
west side of the highway.

"I was driving on the highway between Emerald Beach
and Sandy Beach when I saw a bright white light,
round in shape, as large as a car, hovering in the
west, then moving to the east across the highway,"
Kylie reported, "The UFO followed my car for ten
minutes.. It was a real bright white light but it was not
blinking. The light appeared suddenly, hovered, then
moved to the other (east) side of the highway, seemed to
follow my car for ten minutes, disappeared suddenly."

Coffs Harbour, N.S.W. is located about 329 kilometers
(200 miles) north of Sydney. (Email Form Report)

TWO HOVERING UFOs CAUGHT ON VIDEOTAPE IN CANADA

On Monday, January 1, 2000, "sometime between 4:30 and
5:30 p.m.," Nathan Wright and a few companions were
outdoors on Manitoulin Island, a large island in northern
Lake Huron, just south of Canada's Ontario province.

Suddenly, Nathan spotted two curious lights in the
southwestern sky. "There were two lights and
they hovered over the southwestern part of the island," he
reported, "One light had a double tail and a very bright
center. Yellowish, I would say. We were looking toward the southwest
part of the island. I distinctly saw two objects--
one looked like a comet--but they did not move."

Nathan immediately grabbed a videocamera and began
shooting. "I also caught them on videotape for
about 30 to 60 seconds. They were bright yellowish
and there was no sound." (Email Form Report)

(Editor's Note: Manitoulin Island is a sacred site in
Midewiwin, the traditional religion of the Anishinabe,
an indigenous people of the USA and Canada. They are
also known as Chippewa or Ojibwe.)

TRIANGULAR UFO SIGHTED IN SOUTH CENTRAL INDIANA

On Friday, January 5, 2001, eyewitness G.E.D.
was driving east on Indiana Highway 45 between
Bloomington (population 65,000) and New Unionville
(population 2,000) when, he reported, "I saw a very
Unusual aircraft on my way home from work. I saw
a bright yellow light with a white light, maybe not as bright,
hovering in the sky. There were two red lights on top, none
on the belly. So I rounded a bend and I saw that the
craft was about 50 feet (15 meters) above treetop (level),
crossing the road from right (south) to left (north). directly
overhead."

"I pulled off to watch and noticed that other
vehicles behind me had also done the same. There
was no noise. I rolled down my window to listen.
Nothing. As the craft passed over my car, I got a quick
look at it against the night sky 'light pollution' from
Bloomington. It was triangle-shaped with a white light
at each of the three wing tips (corners) and
appeared to be black in color. A mile or so down
the road, the snow looked (as if it had been) blown
across the road like drifting. The rest of the road was clear.
I thought 'copter' (helicopter) at first until I saw the thing.
Not like anything I had ever seen."

Bloomington is approximately 68 miles (111 kilometers)
south of Indianapolis. (Many thanks to Steve Wilson Sr.
for this report.)

COUPLE SEES A UFO IN VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

On Saturday, January 6, 2001, at 9:15 p.m.,
Warren L. was driving to dinner with his girlfriend when
"my girlfriend pointed at an odd 'aircraft' in the sky,"
he reported, "We immediately got out of the car to
get a better look. At once I knew it was not an aircraft,
as we known an aircraft to be."

"The object was a mix between rectangle, triangle and
parallelogram. That is, we could not definitely describe or
perceive its shape. It was dark-colored (like a USA military
Stealth bomber--W.L--a constant leading-edge light, a constant
trailing-edge light, and a repeatedly flashing middle light. All
lights were white."

Warren heard a strange "almost imperceptible" sound as the
craft passed overhead. "It sounded like an electrical drone or
buzzing completely different from that of a prop (propeller)
plane. The buzzing sound was not very loud--quite like a small private
aircraft at the same distance from us."

"The craft moved in a straight line at approximately
2,000 feet (600 meters) at the speed of a blimp. The speed
of the object just does not make sense, because it
was going too slow to stay in the air based on current
jet technology. (That is, not enough speed to maintain
lift for an aircraft of that size--J.T.) The size of the object was
the length of my index finger at arm's length. My estimate
is that the object was the length of two or three
Boeing 747 jetliners in a row. As it moved away into
the distance, the leading edge just disappeared. This
leads me to believe that the leading light was
pointing away from us and could no longer be seen
from our position." (Email Form Report)

NASA: SPACECRAFT NEAR TO LAND ON EROS

"NASA scientists plan the first 'controlled
descent' of a spacecraft onto an asteroid's surface"
in February 2001.

""The landing provides a dramatic finish for a year-long
mission to explore Eros, one of the rocky asteroids
orbiting near our planet."

"'It's a very risky landing,' says mission head Robert
Farquhar of the Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, USA.
'But the mission is ending, so we might as well try
something spectacular.'"

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (BEAR)
"spacecraft is running out of fuel and has accomplished
nearly all of its scientific goals."

"'Basically, we're out of money, out of time and
we'll be out of fuel,' Farquhar says."

On February 12, "controllers plan to land the
spacecraft in a series of rocket firings to slow its
descent. The spacecraft has circled Eros since Valentine's Day
last year (February 14, 2000) capturing unparalleled looks
at the surface of an asteroid. The mission has revealed
surprising complexity in the asteroid's composition,
Farquhar says. For instance, scientists learned that geologic
activity of some unknown form reshapes the asteroid's
surface."

"Eros, a potato-shaped rock about 21 miles
(34 kilometers) long, circles the sun on an eccentric
path that takes it from within 12 million miles of
Earth's orbit to a spot outside the orbit of mars, where
it is now, 150 million miles out from the sun," or
about 52 million miles from Earth.

"If the landing succeeds, the probe will return
little information aside from its position, perhaps
serving as a beacon for later explorers," sort of like
a "space buoy."

""Images of the surface" of Eros "from an altitude of
only 1,640 feet should result from the landing--allowing
resolution of features as small as 4 inches (10 centimeters)
across." (See USA Today for January 8, 2001,
"NASA shoots for 'spectacular' landing," page 1.)

MIRACULOUS FLOWERS SPROUT ON A GOLD STATUE IN SOUTH KOREA

"Flowers that bloom only once every 3,000 years
are budding on the head of a sacred Buddhist
statue."

Buddhist priests in South Korea "say the
legendary flowers blossoming on the forehead of
Kian Yin the Compassionate" only appear "when the
'Sage King of the Future' (also known as Maitreya,
the future Buddha--J.T.) comes into the world," which
one Buddhist leader called, "a delight that gives joy beyond
description."

"The Miracle of the Flowers, as it's now being called,
happened in the Chonggyesa Temple," in a suburb of Seoul,
the capital of South Korea. "Tens of thousands of
pilgrims are flocking to see the white blossoms on
the tip of the eyebrow of the shining, gilded statue of
Kuan Yin."

"'Kuan Yin is a gentle Buddhist deity who refused
to enter paradise (Nirvana--J.T.) because she heard the cries of
suffering humanity,' says religious expert Dr. Kenneth
Ireland (No relation to Kathy--J.T.) 'She is acknowledged to
save the soul of everyone on Earth, turning her back on none.'"

""'Many are now saying that the monastery of
Chonggye-sa could become the Buddhist Lourdes
because many cures are being performed there.'"

"According to the monks, 21 threadlike stems are growing
from the statue of Kuan Yin, each with a tiny white
flower 'no bigger than the tip of a ballpoint pen.'"

"This is the first time in the 1,000-year history
of the monastery that the flowers have blossomed."

"'Buddhists say sighting the flowers is like
witnessing the birth of Buddha,'" he added.

"Experts say it's unthinkable that the
500-year-old statue of Kuan Yin, gilded every
three years over the (original) woodwork, could
produce growing flowers without divine intervention."

"'Botanically, the flower is related to the ficus,'
says botanist William Grant, 'There is just no way it could
take root in the statue.'"

"Dr. Ireland says the flowers are regarded as
divine in India, Japan and China and are believed to
bloom only when a momentous event is about to
happen."

"Buddhist monks are currently keeping a prayer vigil
at the statue, waiting for the event that will change
mankind's future forever." (See the tabloid newspaper
Sun for January 9, 2001, "Miracle of the Flowers,"
page 16.)

READER FEEDBACK:

UFOLOGIST DOUBTS TRUTH OF BAKERSFIELD UFO STORY

Larry Hatch writes, "You may want to touch up
the geography in one California case."

"There is no desert north of Bakersfield, CA, just
farmland. There is no 'Pine Mountain' in California, neither a
town nor a landmark" according to "the most recent
U.S.G.S. (U.S. Geodetic Survey) National Gazeteer
of the USA."

(Editor's Comment: There is, however, a 'Pine Mountain'
shown north of Bakersfield in the 1997 Rand-McNally Road Atlas,
page 12. Perhaps a California reader can explain this
discrepancy.)

"There is only one Highway 97 i193California,
CA S.R. 193, which runs east and west of Auburn, CA.
and the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento. No desert here
at all."

"The witness said he was seeing 'three lights flying in
repeated circles. They flew in formation for a while,
then flew away. (The witness was) North of Bakersfield between
Highways 193 and 36." (See UFO Roundup,
volume 5, number 52, "Californians report two new
UFO sightings," page 6.)

"There is only one Highway 36 in California,
CA S.E. 36, which runs between Fortuna and Eureka
and Red Bluff, again way up in northern California.
CA 193 and 36 are at least 70 miles apart (as the
crow flies--L.H.) at their closest points."

"Both are hundreds of miles from Bakersfield
and neither are they anywhere near a desert, nor to one
another."

"His daughter was a student in Santa Cruz,. He called her
dorm 'on his cell phone' and she said she could see it from
her dorm window.'"

"Santa Cruz, CA is hundreds of miles northwest of
Bakersfield on the Pacific Coast, south of the San
Francisco Bay area. Santa Cruz is 15- to 250 miles
southwest of CA 193 and 36 It is a bit doubtful
that the coed could see it from her dorm window."

"Maybe the correspondent is pulling your leg."
(Editor's Note: As of this writing, the source has not offered
any commentary on Larry Hatch's precise, point-by-point
refutation of those claims.)

1985: REPTOID HALL

Concordia College is a quiet school located in rural
Moorhead, Minnesota, about 19 miles (16 kilometers)
east of Fargo, North Dakota. There's not much
to distinguish Concordia from many small schools in
the USA's Upper Midwest. But there is one thing that
makes Concordia College unique.

Hoyum Hall, one of the girls' dorms at Concordia,
appears to be home to a colony of Reptoids.

Over the years, there have been a number of
strange Reptoid sightings at Hoyum.

In late January of 1986, freshman Amanda Flynn
(all names have been changed to protect the ladies'
privacy--J.T.) was in the bathroom, clad in her underwear,
washing her hair in preparation for a date that night.

Amanda was leaning over the sink, scrubbing her
shampoo-lathered hair with her fingers. Suddenly,
she felt a thumb and forefinger pinch the elastic
waistband of her panties. The chilly fingers pulled the
waistband far back and let fly. Snap!

"Owww!" Looking at the mirror, Amanda saw "a hooded and
caped figure behind her, reflected in the mirror." The hood
shadowed much of his face, revealing a gaunt dark green
reptilian chin and thin, lipless mouth. The black cape hid
much of his body, showing only a glimpse of a scaly chest.

Amanda gasped out loud. Then she got angry, thinking
it was probably some fraternity brother from Fargo. Lifting her
hand, she spun around instantly. "You son of a--!"

Amanda's intended slap passed through empty air.

There was no one behind her.

In March of 1988, freshman Kathy Oberg returned
to Hoyum from her early morning jog and decided to
take a shower. Soon she was in an upstairs bathroom,
soaking herself beneath the streaming showerhead.

Suddenly, Kathy became aware of a shadow
blocking the bathroom lights. Turning around, she saw
"the mysterious figure hovering above the shower door."
The sight of those scaly three-fingered hands gripping the
shiny aluminum door frame sent a burst of panic through
her. She let out a scream they could have heard in
Minneapolis.

In late February of 1989, sophomore Nancy Petersen
had "attended all her classes, endured a full hour of
orchestra rehearsal, and then worked in the cafeteria line
to earn her board. She's tired, but she has to study a good
three-and-a-half hours in a dorm full of girls before
she can go to bed."

"Then, more than ready for sleep," Nancy "climbs up
to her loft and flops down. She reaches to pull up her
blanket," but a shadowy pair of hands moves the blanket
toward her, covering her to her shoulders.

Thinking it was her roommate, Nancy murmured,
"Thanks, Margie."

But as her head nestled on the pillow, Nancy's eyes
popped wide open. Hold it! Since when does Margie
have only three fingers!? Nancy sat up instantly. "There,
at the foot of the bed, on the same ladder she just
climbed up seconds ago, is the horrid figure."

Nancy was "sure the door was locked when she
came back from the bathroom. Was there a ghost in the dorm?"

On a warm night in early May of 1993, freshman
Angela Tarohachi was awakened from a sound sleep
by the sound of metallic rattles. Blinking sleepily, she
peered over the rim of her top bunk and saw a shadowy
female figure standing there. Oh, my God! Angela thought,
It's that ghost they told me about last September!

While Angela watched. the lock tumblers rattled again,
and the latch moved as if by magic. The silent, motionless
female figure stood at least four feet away. She didn't touch
the door at all. The door swung silently open, and the female
departed.

There was no answer. Angela peered toward the bottom bunk.
It was empty. Jenny Lou was gone.

The door, though, was still open. After climbing
down the ladder, Angela put on her bathrobe and rushed into
the hallway. There, at the window, stood her sophomore roommate.
Jenny Lou's auburn red hair was up in curlers. She was
wearing long black opera gloves, thigh-high fishnet stockings,
black dress pumps, a black choker--and nothing else.

"Jenny! What are you doing!?" Angela cried, rushing
down the hallway.

But then Angela got an even bigger surprise. Her
red-haired roommate was standing in front of the window,
sound asleep.

"I waved my hand in front of her nose--nothing. Jen
was really out of it," Angela recalled, "I didn't know what
to do. They say you're not supposed to wake sleepwalkers, that they'll go
back to bed on their own. Well, I couldn't just leave her standing
there. If any boys had come by outside, they would have
freaked out. So I went back to our room for her terrycloth
robe."

No sooner had Angela returned than her roommate began
sleepwalking again, wandering the corridors of Hoyum Hall,
with her freshman roommate tagging along behind.

"We must have wandered the building for at least a
half an hour," Angela recalled, "Occasionally, Jen would mutter
something unintelligible. Or she'd stop in the hallway,
turn and face the wall, and start pressing different points on
it with each hand. Or she'd just stand there, as if she was
waiting for an elevator or a door to open. It was plenty
weird, believe me. Finally, she went back to our room,
sat down on her bed, slowly took off her shoes and slid
under the blankets. A minute later, she was snoring."

The following morning, Angela questioned her roommate
about the episode, and "Jenny Lou looked at me as if
I had three heads. 'So where did you get the opera gloves?'
I asked her. When she saw what she was wearing, Jenny
Lou's face turned redder than a tomato. Boy, she was just
sooooo embarrassed."

Yet Jenny Lou Reilly had never had a sleepwalking
episode before--not even as a small child. She had
no recollection of the previous night's events. Nor could she
explain how she had come by her unusual attire.

In addition to the Reptoids, Hoyum Hall has been
plagued by many poltergeist manifestations.

"Sometimes students who are known for their neat rooms
will find them out of order, clothing and books and
papers strewn all over the floor. Locked doors open
slowly in the early evening hours. Or radios and TVs
are blaring when their owners are sure they turned
them off when they left their rooms. Sometimes,
even in midwinter, when the heat is on in
the rooms and halls, a cold draft or a cold spot will be
felt, always in the same part of the same rooms. Some
of the girls wake up to hear their names being called out,
but there's no one around and the hall is perfectly quiet."

Such is life at Concordia College's "Reptoid Hall."
(See the book Ghostly Tales of Minnesota by
Ruth D. Hein, Adventure Publications, Cambridge, Minn., 1992,
pages 63 to 65.)

We'll be back next week with more UFO and paranormal news
from around the planet Earth, brought to you by "the
paper that goes home--UFO Roundup." See you in
seven days.

UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2001 by Masinaigan
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